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Boggs keeps a notebook of letters and cards from former students. Most are thank you notes. They thank him for his patient instruction, compassion and inspiration.

Earlier this week, those handwritten notes culminated in one of the South Carolina art community's highest honors when Boggs was given the S.C. Arts Commission's 2013 Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Governor's Award for art education. He will be honored at a Statehouse ceremony in May.

Boggs was nominated by a fixture of the Spartanburg art community, Winston Wingo, who is a long-time public school art teacher and one of Boggs first pupils upon moving to the area. The award has a special meaning to Boggs as a medical condition is forcing him to decrease his teaching after this year.

Wingo called the award the “arts Oscars in the state of South Carolina,” and said he was thrilled Boggs was selected and pleased to have spearheaded his nomination.

“Mac Boggs has given so much of himself. I think this is time for something to be given to him,” Wingo said.

Converse administrators, art patrons and students wrote letter in support of Boggs' nomination for the award. Wingo said a vast number of people recognize and appreciate Boggs energy, enthusiasm and vision.

Boggs said Wingo was a skinny 15-year-old when he showed up at his home in the rain. The aspiring young sculptor was eager to meet Converse College's new professor of sculpture. The two shared an affinity for metal work, and at the time, Boggs was the only modern sculptor in the area. Boggs mentored the young artist and helped him advance his professional career, including supporting him for an adjunct art professor position at Converse.

In many ways, Boggs drug Converse's art department to success. When he arrived, the school was stuck in the days of “French salon” art, he said. Teachers ignored the modern movement of impressionism. On his first day, Boggs asked his students to draw a design of geometric shapes from varying perspectives. Within his first year a small group of students went to the college president and asked Boggs be terminated. A larger group responded by insisting he stay.

“It was a challenge to change their thoughts,” Boggs said. “I said to myself, ‘I won't be here long. I'll be here a year or two, but I'm going to do it anyway.'”

Inside his first few years of teaching, the number of art majors grew from a small handful to more than one hundred. Boggs oversaw construction of the Milliken Fine Arts Building, and is responsible for the addition of several new art programs at the school.

“I watched him take a one room art department and turn it into what it is today,” Wingo said.

Decades later, Boggs said it is the students that have kept him at Converse. He has taught a handful of capable, successful artists, but he is equally proud of the army of art appreciators and art patrons he has built.

“I love the students. I love watching them go, in a semester or four years, from total confusion, total self-doubt, to seeing themselves blossom and bloom,” Boggs said. “All it takes is one inspired person in the class to make it all worthwhile.”

Art education consumed Boggs life. He led interim and summer trips abroad with students to see some of the world's most influential art. He took students to manufacturing companies to investigate methods for fabricating their visions. He has made calls to help students land jobs and internships and recently helped his student Ayako Abe-Miller with the technical aspects of creating the 1,700 pound sculpture she was commissioned to build for the University of South Carolina School of Medicine's Greenville campus. Abe-Miller credited Boggs with her decision to become a sculptor. Student artwork is displayed all around Boggs' Spartanburg home.

“You've got to love it,” Boggs said of being a teacher. “You've got to … understand students, like anyone else, have issues in their lives and you've got to have compassion. You've got to build them up.”

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